Gendering the Renaissance Commonwealth

This pioneering and innovative study challenges modern assumptions of what constitutes the political and the public in Renaissance thought. Offering gendered readings of a wide array of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century political thinkers with a particular focus on the two prime thinkers of the early modern state Niccolò Machiavelli and Jean Bodin Anna Becker reconstructs a neglected but important classical tradition in political thought. Exploring how 'the political' was incorporated into a wide array of 'private' or 'apolitical' topics by early modern thinkers Becker demonstrates how both republican and absolutist thinkers - the two poles which organise early modern political thought - relied on gendered justifications. In doing so she reveals how the foundations of the modern state were significantly shaped by gendered concerns.